Day 35 - Venizia to Vienna

So things got worse in our little train compartment of fun. First off, a sixth and final person joined our overnight gang making us 'completely' uncomfortable, rather than 'mostly' uncomfortable. The seats didn't recline for shit, there was no leg room at all, the seats were narrow, it was smelly, and steaming hot. Me and Rob had the two window seats (ie: the two seats as far away from any possible escape from the claustrophobia), but it didn't matter because you couldn't se anythin gout the windows anyways. We had about 3 L's of Heineken each in our bags, so i did the only reasonable thing to do and started drinking. Soon enough finishing all my beers and one of Rob's.

We'd gotten on at 8, left at 8:44, and then finally, around 2am, there was some luck for us, because 3 people all of a sudden got off (not sure where they went, but didn't give a shit). The 3 people getting off was probably one of the top 5 things to ever have happend to me. We then figured out that you can shift the facing seats together to make a kind of bed. Wow! So we set it up, and after the beer, I passed out in no time. It still wasn't a great sleep though. I woke up a bunch of times, one time with my arm around Rob, the next time with my arm around the poor little Asian girl on my other side. Even though the seats made beds of sort, they were still VERY narrow (and i'm not very narrow) and way too short. So they didn't work for me at all beacuse I was too long, but i couldn't sleep on an angle or pull my legs up because the seats were so narrow.

NEVER AGAIN!

So we finally rolled into Vienna at 9ish; 13 hours after getting onto the train. We'd booked ourselves 2 nights ahead of time so we headed straight for the hostel to drop our stuff off. We're staying at the Wombat's hostel here in Vienna which is a member of Europe's Famous Hostels (it was ranked 4th in the world in 2003). It's a really sweet place with great rooms; our is a 4 bed dorm with an on-sweet washroom with shower (very rare). It's a great place, clean, friendly, and has a not-bad bar in it too with happy hour from 6 till 8 with 1 Euro pints.

So we checked in, but couldn't get to our room till 2, so we put our bags in the luggage room and thought we'd wander for the rest of the day. Right before we headed out, i asked the guy at the front desk about the local Vienna hockey team, to which he responded "Hockey???", when out of nowhere, this Aussie girl who was walking by cut in and said that she'd looked up the local team and they were playing tonite, but didn't know anything other than that. So i told her that we were heading out for the day and would find things out and hopefully run into her later.

So me and Rob took off, bought a 24 hour Underground pass, then rode downtown into the old part of town. We spent the next few hours wandering around. We checked out the main church in town which was huge, but all kind've stained black (maybe from coal or other forms or pollution) so it looked pretty creepy. All the German churches looked like that too. I don't trust them. They always talk like they're pissed off, they're drinking all the time, and they worship in black churches....with Christian and Anke being exceptions of course.

We wandered around and saw a bunch of other impressive looking buildings, although we had no clue what we were looking at half the time. Its been kind've funny like that in alot of places where we'll see an awesome looking building and then take pics of it or in front of it, but have zero clue what it is.

Eventually we made our way back to the hostel and i jumped on the net and found out that the pro team here in Vienna was playing tonite, so i wrote down the time and got instructions from two ladies in the Underground station on how to get there. Afterwards we hit the grocery store for meats for dinner then Rob took a nap and i did laundry and hung out with 3 Aussies and an American guy. Right after finishing laundry, i ran into the Aussie girl from earlier, Erin, and she said she still wanted to come to the game and was really excited to go because she's never even seen a game on television. So me and Rob ate, cleaned up, then met Erin at 6 out front.

The ride to the arena was about 25 minutes from the main station near our hostel and there were a ton of people around wearing the black, yellow, and orange or the Vienna Capitals. We got tickets for 12 Euro each, which got us seats in the second level and we had a great view. The arena wasn't as big as an NHL arena, but still would sit about 7-8000 probably and by the time the puck dropped the place was packed solid. So i guess we were lucky to have gotten tickets.

Now, as most people know, i love hockey as much or more as any Canadian and still say that Canadians are the best hockey fans; but Austrians are definately MUCH crazier. I've never seen anything like it in my life. I've been to alot of hockey games including a second round playoff game between the Leafs and Sens that went to second overtime, but that seemed tame now comparing that with this game in Vienna. The fans were nuts and didn't sit hardly at all during the game...and the beer was cheap (i wonder if the two correlated at all?). The main section that led everything was right behind the home teams net where there were two huge drums pounding out different beats during the game depending on what was going on and then depending on what beat was being pounded out, ALL the fans would sing different songs. And it didn't stop all the way through the game. It was pretty awesome. We had a great time and Erin is now a hockey fan. The home team won 2-1, so it was a close, exciting game, and it got pretty rough, but everytime two guys would square up, the refs (who were wearing blue, white and red stars instead of stripes) would jump in right away which sucked. There would've been at least 5 fights back home. It was pretty cool too because both goals were scored by ex-Leaf Mike Craig.

After the game, we headed back to the hostel and hung out with a bunch of people in the hostel bar for the rest of the night.